Evangelical scholar expelled! » « More magic DNA snake oil

Sex with children AND getting rich? They’re brilliant!

Father Maciel was one of the most notorious influential pedophiles in the Catholic hierarchy — he led an order, the Legion of Christ, which seems to have consisted of likely catamites for his pleasures. Predatory sexual habits don’t seem to be his only legacy, though: follow the money.

Maciel left a trail of wreckage among his followers. Moreover, in a gilded irony for Benedict — who prosecuted him despite pressure from Maciel’s chief supporter, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state from 1990 to 2006 — Maciel left an ecclesiastical empire with which the church must now contend. The Italian newsweekly L’espresso estimates the Legion’s assets at 25 billion euros, with a $650 million annual budget, according to The Wall Street Journal .The order numbered 700 priests and 1,300 seminarians in 2008. On March 15 of this year, five bishops, called visitators, from as many countries, delivered their reports to the pope after a seven-month investigation. A final report is expected by the end of April.

Read the whole article. The twisted sexual politics of Catholicism are just a small part of the corrupt whole: the accounts of the kickbacks and bribes — $5000 here, $10000 there, all adding up to a giant pot of cash — make the organization sound like just a gilded Mafia.

For some reason, this video came to mind after reading it.

Evangelical scholar expelled! » « More magic DNA snake oil

Comments

  2. Lynna, OM says

    PZ was right to highlight the financial scams as well as the pedophilia. From the article:

    Maciel left an ecclesiastical empire with which the church must now contend. The Italian newsweekly L’espresso estimates the Legion’s assets at 25 billion euros, with a $650 million annual budget, according to The Wall Street Journal .The order numbered 700 priests and 1,300 seminarians in 2008.

    Money, influence, power, sex, evil. And the church didn’t put Maciel in jail. Oh, no, they just retired him to a live of contemplation.

  3. https://me.yahoo.com/a/AqctLzV5uYBhJC1RDuIJ2eNTerV82IxG#7248c says

    The National Catholic Reporter deserves a Pulitzer for this!
    This rank corruption at the highest levels of the Vatican is astounding!
    Am I the only one that smells the start of a New Reformation?

  4. ivo says

    Wow, the comments on that site are mind-numbing.

    The willing submission and mental slavery of some of these Catholic minions reminds me of nothing else like Sauron’s orks. In my mind, Ratz has just upgraded from Palpatine to Sauron level.

  5. heygetthis says

    This reminds me of ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’ a 1963 novel by Morris West, and a movie starring Anthony Quinn as a Pope who actually cared (!?).

  6. daveau says

    NAMBLA just never had the money thing down. They should have been a religion, then they’d still be in business.

  7. Pierce R. Butler says

    Sarah Silverman will burn in hell forever!

    What can I do to get thrown into the same pit with her?

  8. Lynna, OM says

    I’m a bit ill after reading the revelations of Maciel’s connections to the super-rich, like Carlos Slim. Maciel was a friend of Mel Gibson’s as well. All the crazies with money orbited around the Legion. Governor Jeb Bush, and Senator Rick Santorum were counted among Maciel’s friends. (Maybe we should look for a connection to The Family and C Street?)

    Excerpt from the article:

    John Paul’s support gave Maciel credibility as he moved with seamless ease among the ultra-wealthy. At a 2004 fundraiser in New York, a video cameraman filmed him running his fingers down the tuxedo lapel of the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, a major Legion supporter. Besides donations, Legion schools in Mexico with high tuitions and low salaries subsidized the operations in Rome, say men familiar with the order’s finances.
         As questions swirl about how Maciel misled so many people, his ability to attract the powerful and influential is beyond dispute. Legion supporters ranged from Steve McEveety, producer of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” (Legion priests advised on the film), to Thomas Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza and Ave Maria University in Florida. Others who supported the Legion include former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who spoke at Legion conferences; Spanish opera singer Placido Domingo, who performed at a fundraiser; and the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, who wrote that he believed with “moral certainty” that the charges against Maciel were “false and malicious.”
         Harvard Law Professor and former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glendon taught at Regina Apostolorum Athenaeum, the Legion’s university in Rome, and advised in the planning that led to the order’s first university in America, University of Sacramento, Calif. In a 2002 letter for the Legion Web site she scoffed at the allegations against him and praised Maciel’s “radiant holiness” and “the success of Regnum Christi [the order’s lay wing] and the Legionaries of Christ in advancing the New Evangelization.”

  10. https://me.yahoo.com/hairychris444#96384 says

    That this article comes from a Catholic source makes it that much more brutal.

    Great reporting on some nasty characters. I wonder if he’s watching his back..?

  11. Larry says

    Holy jebus, this is starting to sound like the plot from another of Dan Brown’s horrible novels.

  12. BioBeing says

    A huge financial operation is in the hands of a religious order many critics have likened to a cult, a group whose leadership is suspected of hiding its superior’s corrupt life.

    I know this quote was about the Legion, but to me it sure sounds it could equally well be applied to the Catholic Church as a whole.

  13. Lynna, OM says

    Here’s a llink to the youtube video of an ABC News segment on Marcial Maciel and Legion of Christ (dated april1st, 2010):

  14. negentropyeater says

    The problem with selling the Vatican is that the cost of sanitizing the place would eat up all the profits.

    You could still sell all its assets to the highest bidders and let go of the organisation that runs them.

  15. Jimmy-boy says

    There’s a lot of this ‘Ratzinger prosecuted Marcial’ story going around. Firstly, he was not prosecuted. That would involve a legitimate court. Obviously he was protected from that by Ratzinger and PJ2. He did face an internal investigation (eventually, and after massive external pressure) at which point he was made to retire to ‘a life of pennance’ in the US.

    I don’t know but I wonder what that life of pennance involved as there is no record of him having access to his huge personal wealth restricted in any way. He died in 2008 unprosecuted, with no justice for his many victims therefore.

    Ratzi is 100% guilty on this one too.

  16. Lynna, OM says

    Jimmy Boy @15: I agree completely. Ratzinger was probably looking for the appearance of prosecution, without actually engaging in prosecution or punishment of Maciel. Maciel was not defrocked, nor in any way punished. In his old age, his work load was reduced, and that’s about it.

    In the ABC coverage, it was noted that one of Maciel’s sons accused Maciel of sexual abuse — that is, the son claims that Maciel sexually abused him.

  17. blf says

    Hum… Haven’t read it in detail (yet), but Vatican tells bishops to report abuse cases to police:

    Vatican issues detailed instructions to all bishops after criticism of Catholic church’s handling of paedophile priests

    In an attempt to prove that the Vatican is heeding criticism of its handling of paedophile priests, the Holy See today issued detailed instructions to all its bishops on how to report abuse to the police.

    The short set of rules, published online in English, is an attempt to satisfy critics who have accused the Catholic church of covering up some of the dozens of abuse cases coming to light in the US and Europe. “Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed,” the document states.

    Francis X Rocca, Vatican correspondent for Religion News Service, said: “This is a new and notable public emphasis on the need to follow local laws.”

    The Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano, described the rules as part of a “transparency drive” adopted by the Vatican. The document, it added, was based on the Motu Proprio, the 2001 Vatican ruling which ordered bishops to forward abuse cases to Rome.

    But one Vatican expert said the 2001 document gave no specific instructions on reporting to the police. “There is no similar sentence in the Motu Proprio,” said John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. “The Vatican may say these guidelines make explicit what was always understood, but the truth is that for years abuse was not reported to the police.”

    In Ireland, bishops reportedly understood the 2001 rules to mean they should not tell police about abuse.

    …

    But the guidelines mark the Vatican’s first public declaration that all its bishops should contact the police when they learn of allegations of abuse.

    A Vatican spokesman, Father Ciro Benedettini, said the rules had been internal policy at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2003. But when asked if bishops knew of this internal policy, he declined to comment.

    The newly published guidelines also outline the different ways that abusive priests can be disciplined by the church’s internal courts. In “very grave cases”, the pope may issue a decree dismissing a priest from the clerical state.

    The guidelines were posted on the Vatican’s new blog, which has been set up together with a Twitter feed and a YouTube page to improve communications.

  18. blf says

    Hum… Haven’t read it in detail (yet), but Vatican tells bishops to report abuse cases to police:

    Vatican issues detailed instructions to all bishops after criticism of Catholic church’s handling of paedophile priests

    In an attempt to prove that the Vatican is heeding criticism of its handling of paedophile priests, the Holy See today issued detailed instructions to all its bishops on how to report abuse to the police.

    The short set of rules, published online in English, is an attempt to satisfy critics who have accused the Catholic church of covering up some of the dozens of abuse cases coming to light in the US and Europe. “Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed,” the document states.

    Francis X Rocca, Vatican correspondent for Religion News Service, said: “This is a new and notable public emphasis on the need to follow local laws.”

    The Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano, described the rules as part of a “transparency drive” adopted by the Vatican. The document, it added, was based on the Motu Proprio, the 2001 Vatican ruling which ordered bishops to forward abuse cases to Rome.

    But one Vatican expert said the 2001 document gave no specific instructions on reporting to the police. “There is no similar sentence in the Motu Proprio,” said John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. “The Vatican may say these guidelines make explicit what was always understood, but the truth is that for years abuse was not reported to the police.”

    In Ireland, bishops reportedly understood the 2001 rules to mean they should not tell police about abuse.

    …

    But the guidelines mark the Vatican’s first public declaration that all its bishops should contact the police when they learn of allegations of abuse.

    A Vatican spokesman, Father Ciro Benedettini, said the rules had been internal policy at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2003. But when asked if bishops knew of this internal policy, he declined to comment.

    The newly published guidelines also outline the different ways that abusive priests can be disciplined by the church’s internal courts. In “very grave cases”, the pope may issue a decree dismissing a priest from the clerical state.

    The guidelines were posted on the Vatican’s new blog, which has been set up together with a Twitter feed and a YouTube page to improve communications.

    Not all hyperlinks preserved in the above: My original attempt to post this got stuffed into moderation for unstated reasons, which I am assuming was due to the number of links.

  19. Lynna, OM says

    This part of story is particularly chilling because it includes protection for doing wrong, plus a sanctioned spy network:

    According to two former Legionaries who spent years in Rome, Maciel paid for the renovation of the residence in Rome for the Argentine cardinal who was prefect of religious from 1976 to 1983, the late Eduardo Francisco Pironio. “That’s a pretty big resource,” explains one priest, who said the Legion’s work on the residence was expensive, and widely known at upper levels of the order. “Pironio got his arm twisted to sign the Legion constitution.”
         The Legion constitution included the highly controversial Private Vows, by which each Legionary swore never to speak ill of Maciel, or the superiors, and to report to them anyone who uttered criticism. The vows basically rewarded spying as an expression of faith, and cemented the Legionaries’ lockstep obedience to the founder. The vows were Maciel’s way of deflecting scrutiny as a pedophile. But cardinals on the consultors’ board at Congregation for Religious balked on granting approval.

  20. shonny says

    Are there still people who don’t know where the Mafia learnt their methods?
    Just that the Mafia is slightly less dishonest than their tutors.

  22. Lynna, OM says

    Christopher Hitchens predicted the Maciel affair would be the next item on the “grisly docket” in a March 15th article. Excerpt:

    The next item on this grisly docket will be the revival of the long-standing allegations against the Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the ultra-reactionary Legion of Christ, in which sexual assault seems to have been almost part of the liturgy. Senior ex-members of this secretive order found their complaints ignored and overridden by Ratzinger during the 1990s, if only because Father Maciel had been praised by the then-Pope John Paul II as an “efficacious guide to youth.” And now behold the harvest of this long campaign of obfuscation. The Roman Catholic Church is headed by a mediocre Bavarian bureaucrat once tasked with the concealment of the foulest iniquity, whose ineptitude in that job now shows him to us as a man personally and professionally responsible for enabling a filthy wave of crime. Ratzinger himself may be banal, but his whole career has the stench of evil—a clinging and systematic evil that is beyond the power of exorcism to dispel. What is needed is not medieval incantation but the application of justice—and speedily at that.

  24. David Marjanović says

    I have occasionally wondered about that silly prophecy that says this is the second-to-last pope. It might be right for the wrong reasons.

    Of course, the description of the second-to-last pope in that prophecy is not similar to the meatspace one at all…

  25. MadScientist says

    Now the Vatican says that rape must be reported IF REQUIRED BY THE LAW. Nice weasel. Of course that brings up an ethical question. Like Hubbard’s scientology, the catholic church requires confessions (though I don’t know how long it has been since the church has used them for blackmail). The official claim is that a confession should only be known to the person who confesses, the confessor, and god (haha). Come up, say “hey, I killed a hundred people last night, want a new cathedral?” and you might be given the grueling ordeal of reciting the rosary twice to atone for mass murder, but none of this should be reported to the enforcers of human laws. Of course if you don’t offer a new cathedral or a sacrifice of twoscore virgin children there is no guarantee that god will protect you. So: should religions have the authority to forgive crimes just like that and not pass information on to law enforcement officials? Technically, if I did such a thing it would be considered a crime on my part (even if in reality prosecutions are extremely rare).

  26. Jimmy-boy says

    @#22 I lived in Rwanda in 2000. The story running around was that nuns were ‘complaining’ that the priests were sexually abusing them because they believed that nuns would be virgins and therefore not give them aids. It was a common story… No ideas if it was true – but I heard it enough times.

  27. Kirk says

    I wish the Silverman video had been posted standalone, and not tainted by being associated with the typical RCC perversion.

    Because her skit is genius.

    Every now and then you come across something that is wonderful, and that’s what this skit is.

  28. Rorschach says

    I wish the Silverman video had been posted standalone, and not tainted by being associated with the typical RCC perversion.

    That’s kindof the point of the video, you know.And it is actually not new, and was done way before the worst of these scandals came to light.

  29. Kirk says

    That’s kindof the point of the video, you know.

    Point taken.

    It was the first time I saw the skit, and didn’t check to see when it was originally made.

    Revised version of #26:

    Her skit is genius.

    Every now and then you come across something that is wonderful, and that’s what this skit is.